Ghosn seeks cautious assessment of GM alliance

SAN FRANCICO (MarketWatch) -- Nissan and Renault chief Carlos Ghosn said Thursday he is looking forward to a sober assessment of whatever benefits a three-way alliance with General Motors Corp. might achieve when he sits down to discuss the possibility with GM CEO Rick Wagoner.

At the same time, he ruled out expanding his responsibilities to include running a third car company, words aimed at offering some assurance to Wagoner.

Ghosn, in an interview on CNBC, said any discussion of adding GM
GM, -0.52%
to the existing Renault-Nissan alliance must be "cautious and objective" and clearly identify synergies beneficial to all three.

"The second step, is how do you unlock it [the synergies]?" he said.

Areas likely to see their interests overlap include product development, sharing data and technology, and procurement, he said.

He also said that an alliance with GM might actually slow further job cuts in the North American auto industry if France's Renault S.A. (013190) and Japan's Nissan Motors
NSANY, -0.14%
are looking to expand their manufacturing base and might be able to use GM facilities that would otherwise be idled.

But he cautioned anyone against thinking that bringing Renault and Nissan into the mix would somehow solve all of GM's problems, saying that GM would ultimately have to sort those out its own.

The list of challenges is long and includes fierce competition from Japanese rivals Toyota
TM, -0.77%
and Honda
HMC, -0.45%
flagging sales in its core North American market, soaring employee health care and pension costs, rising interest rates and record-high gasoline prices, all of which contributed to a $10.6 billion loss in 2005.

Ghosn, who brought Nissan back from the brink of bankruptcy in 1999, is meeting with Waggoner in Detroit at the behest of GM's biggest shareholder, Kirk Kerkorian and his Tracinda group, which owns a 9.9% stake in the company. See full story.

Kerkorian, through his close advisor Jerry York, pushed to bring the two men together as a means of accelerating GM's laborious restructuring.

Ghosn said he has spoken several times on the phone with Wagoner about Friday's talks, and found him "very open." At the same time, he said any skepticism on Wagoner's part to an overseas linkage was understandable given the weight of the Detroit giant's massive turnaround effort and bad experiences with previous overseas alliances.

While many in the automotive industry wonder what a GM-Renault-Nissan team might look like, Ghosn was quick to point out that it would not create another DaimlerChrysler
DCX
which, he pointed out, was a merger, not an alliance.

He stressed, however, that if an alliance appeared to be advantageous, taking a shareholder stake in GM would be an essential step in demonstrating to investors and employees alike that the agreement was "serious."

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